Tales from the Coop: Yard Chickens

Our little ladies have quickly outgrown their coop. We haven't had time to upgrade the structure for them yet, so our previously chicken tractor bound hens have gone wild!

We let them out for a few hours a day to stretch their wings and roam for bugs.

It also gives Mr J more opportunities to commune with the chickens. He thinks he is part of the flock and loves to hang out in shade with them!

I haven't been worried about the chickens flying out of the yard until today. We have a four-foot fence around our yard, and they haven't shown much interest in flying until recently. Today they decided to roam further than ever! If they keep this up, then I will either have to learn how to clip wings or build faster.

We Made: A Squirrel Proof Garden...we hope.

Just to recap, we have a thief afoot in the garden. 

A thief we caught red pawed.

A thief our two big dogs are too lazy to chase. You can see the fluffy tail on the right.

A thief who brazenly busted one of the stakes setup to keep him or her out.

*Sigh*

Ever since the garden started really producing, more than half our harvest has ended up being stolen from the garden and left out in the open with one or two bites. When my parents first moved into the house I grew up in, we all woke up one morning to a shotgun being fired next door. The neighbor was shooting the squirrels that had eaten her tomatoes. I thought that was extreme. I'm reconsidering. 

But since I don't really believe in shooting the squirrels (hardly very eco-friendly if I kill the wildlife to save my produce), we have locked up the garden tighter than a safe. We spent the weekend re-staking and re-netting the garden. We haven't really figured out how we will get the produce out, but the squirrels will also be thwarted. It's now a test of wills. 

This afternoon we watched two unsuccessful attempts by the squirrel to break into the garden. Chuck ran out in the yard with the dogs to scare away the squirrel, but the dogs were totally bored with the idea. Useless. 

Sunday Cake: Yogurt Cake with Blueberries

I baked lots of stuff this weekend which I'll write up eventually, but I didn't get around to making a cake because I was tired of cooking by Sunday.

So today, I made the yogurt cake from Smitten Kitchen with the following modifications:

-we only had 3/4 C of plain yogurt so I made up the rest with plain ricotta cheese from the farmer's market 

-subbed lemons for lime

-subbed blueberries for blackberries

All in all a success. But Monday was a welcome party for new faculty so I'm bringing it on Tuesday.

This is my own version of How to Win Friends and Influence People.....with baked goods.

Hackberries

Like many parts of the country, heavy rains and strong winds have been visiting San Antonio lately. These storms have taken a heavy toll of our tress because of the 22 month drought that broke this spring. Many trees lost root and trunk mass during the drought, and the heavy rains have now made the branches too heavy to be supported by the tree bases.

On our two acre lot, we have lost significant portion of about a dozen trees in the past three weeks. Because of this, the hackberry tree has become the bane of my existence. Hackberries are notorious for the trunks rotting from the inside-out to the point where they can no longer support the canopy. These vile trees then attack fences, roofs, and cars across the land.

We have removed many trees in the past month, which is very hard for me to do. I hate to see large trees cut down, but I know it has to happen. The trees may appear healthy on the outside but they are serious hazards. Much of the problem with the hackberry exists because they are a non-native species. They were brought to San Antonio to be shade trees and planted throughout the area. Now they pop up in yards and do not survive well in our climate, causing them to lose large branches. As Jenny and I continue to reshape our yard, we will aim at replacing non-native plants with natives that are better suited to our environment. Besides, there are so many beautiful native in Central Texas, it is hard to go wrong! Suggestions?

This Moment

{this moment} From Soulemama- A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

What We're Reading: The Red Pyramid

Jenny and I fell in love with Rick Riordan's writing while I taught fifth grade English. Don't ask me how that happened, but it did and my students survived. When Riordan's last series (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) about a modern day demigod son of Poseidon ended, we were heart broken.

Luckily, he has released a new series called the Kane Chronicles. The first installment, The Red Pyramid, has a similar structure as Riordan's previous middle school lit books. Sadie and Carter Kane learn that they are the children of Egyptian magicians and must battle gods, monsters, and mortals to save the world. Told in two first person perspectives, The Red Pyramid is extremely similar to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, but it is a style that works for Riordan and is extremely engaging for the reader.

We're Reading: Parenting While Plugged In

The New York Times has an interesting article today about parenting in the digital age.

“Over and over, kids raised the same three examples of feeling hurt and not wanting to show it when their mom or dad would be on their devices instead of paying attention to them: at meals, during pickup after either school or an extracurricular activity, and during sports events.” Yikes.

The article also points out that technology may be changing the language divide that has typically been found in families of different SES levels. Essentially, researchers have shown repeatedly that kids who are raised in higher SES households hear many thousands more words during early childhood than children raised in lower SES households. However, the advent of parenting while checking your iPhone for the eightieth time that day limits how many words parents say to their kids. Hmmmm.

When we bought a new computer a year before Mr. J was born, we intentionally got a desktop with the idea that it would limit our random surfing. If you have to physically leave the rest of the family to get on the computer, it's a little more of a limit.

But then Chuck was issued a laptop by his school and I needed a laptop for my school so we're back to square 1. Add in two iPhones and we're the poster children for potential distracted parenting. It's really tempting when we're both mentally burned out to just turn on the TV or laptop and float through the family time.

But we don't really want to do that. An author I like, Zadie Smith dedicated one of her books with the quote, " Time is how you spend your love." I think it's very true that children don't understand very much about how much we love them. They really only understand what we DO with them and how we act. Children know when we're dividing our attention and really, there is nothing on a screen that I want to spend my time on more than my family.

So we've instituted a few rules.

1) We can watch the BBC World News at 5PM and the National News at 5:30PM, but then the TV goes off until Mr. J goes to bed.

2) We can check our e-mail once before Mr. J goes to bed, but iPhones and laptops need to stay in the bag until after bedtime. This occasionally gets broken when one of us has a time sensitive work thing.

3)No TV on Saturday at all. Mr. J has sorta stopped taking naps. He needs to chill out for a few hours in the middle of the day or he has a rough evening. We're still trying to figure out calm restful activities that will actually keep his attention better than just letting him watch a movie.

4) I quit Facebook partially because it was just a huge time suck that really added very little to my life. I'm also trying to be very good about using my personal e-mail only for personal stuff. My work e-mail is a pain to get into off campus which makes me less likely to check it from my phone and therefore less likely to obsessively check it all evening.

We're doing fairly well, but the lure of the screen is always there. And yes, I realize it's a little crazy to be writing about limiting computer time on a blog but there it is.

McDonald Observatory and Balmorhea

Big Bend Day 2

It will make you breathe deeply whenever you think of it, for you have inhaled eternity. There is no tree, no house to measure things by. You are in scale with the cactus plant, the stone in the distance — the all-important and the nothing.

-Ludwig Bemelmans,

“Texas Legend,” McCall’s, August 1956

Big Bend Day 1

Finally, I wish to offer my opinion, just as a private visitor, that although the old saying that “he who travels must be prepared to take away only as much as he brings with him” applies to all our great parks, it holds true especially of Big Bend. It is a desert-mountain country whose qualities offer an allurement, a satisfaction of soul, only if the visitor will put himself in the right mood, and will remain long enough to know it with some intimacy. He who drives in and drives out without letting the motor cool, may see, to be sure, some most interesting natural objects, but he will not know, and can never love, Big Bend.

-Freeman Tilden, 1945